On the aesthetics of memory

ABSTRACT. The texture of the memoir that makes up the second part of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies (1959) is discontinuous, with unexpected reversals and retrievals. There is nothing timeless to be found behind the events narrated, only something constructed from isolated fragments, yet, somehow, they seem to cohere. This may not bring the expected inner illumination the author searches for, yet it seems to have for him a vitally healing function, as it helps him to come to terms with his own life. pp. 225–229

Keywords: memoir; Robert Lowell; autobiographical memory; narrative; self; truth.